Machan's Musings - Coerced Altruism’s Ruinous Popularity
by Tibor R. Machan
You might say I wrote the book on generosity—one of mine had this as its topic and its title, as well, back in 1998. So when in response to a recent column, in which I reaffirmed the propriety of freely chosen as against coerced generosity, I received dozens of really nasty letters, claiming that I was advocating cruelty and meanness, I had to shake my head in dismay. Will they never get it?
A bill like the Americans with Disabilities Act, along with many others that make it a crime not to help those who are in more or less serious need, is clearly in violation of an elementary principle of morality, one that is captured in a slogan from the famous German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. “Ought” implies “can,” said Kant—who is otherwise not my favorite (because he continued to support a very destructive idea, namely, dualism, the notion that reality is divided into two incompatible, the factual and the mental, realms). In this, however, he pointed his finger at something we all can easily accept, if we but think about it a little: If one is to do the right thing, it must be done freely, un-coerced, voluntarily. Otherwise we are simply behaving as we are forced to by others, something for which no moral credit could accrue to us, something that does not make us decent people and does not make the action morally worthwhile.
In a truly free human community, what measure of generosity, charity, philanthropy are to be forthcoming from people may not be forced upon them and the beneficiaries may not use the force of laws and regulations to elicit what they need and want from others. This is true in the case of all so-called civil rights laws, too, be it for the benefit of members of any type of minorities, be they of some race, gender or disabled group.
For instance, when immigrants come to a free society, they, unlike those who come to certain states of the United States of America, are not entitled to be provided by laws and regulation with special language assistance in their schools or places of work. They need to do the catch-up work with freely given support, not support gotten at the point of the gun. And that goes, also, for all disabled persons, however much this may seem to them unfair or even unjust. It is far more unjust to initiate force against people so as to help one—a point that should be easy to appreciate in simple personal relations in which it is plain common sense that morally no one may coerce another to be helpful, even in cases of dire straits.
In the community in which I live a disaster struck a merciless blow upon a family, killing a teen and destroying their home recently in a wild yet well-populated canyon during heavy rains. In at least partial response, thousands from the neighborhood, including about 75 business establishments from near and far, gathered for a commemorative feast and raised quite a bit of support for the survivors of the disaster, voluntarily, with no one rounding them up to provide the support. This is the way help is secured in a civilized, decent, and free society, not via threats to put people in jail or of fining them if they are not willing to give of their own free will. That is a central difference between how free men and women live in one another’s company and how barbarians do, who extract what they need and want by actual or threatened brute force.
Yet, in response to my recalling what would seem an obvious point—especially in a country that put on record (and the government of which makes a big deal of advocating for all) the conditions by which free people live together, as well as my recalling the spirit of George Orwell’s admonition that "Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious," I got an inordinate amount of flack. No, I am not complaining—I merely lament this fact and make note of it as a disturbing sign of how fragile the idea of liberty is in the very country in which the Founders considered each citizen as having the unalienable right to acting freely and one that had a tragic Civil War fought in large measure so as to abolish slavery, involuntary servitude.
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